What Is Gender? Author(s): Ivy Kennelly, Sabine N. Merz, Judith Lorber Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Aug., 2001), pp. 598-605 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3088925 Accessed: 26/03/2009 15:05 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asa. 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McGuire, L. S., K. O. Ryan, and G. S. Omenn. George Washington University 1975. "Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia II: Cognitive and Behavioral Studies." Behavior Genetics 5:175-88. SABINE N. MERZ Moore, Celia L and Karen L Power. 1992. University of Massachusetts-Amherst "Variation in Maternal Care and Individual Differences in Play, Exploration, and Groom- ing of Juvenile Norway Rat Offspring." Devel- JUDITH LORBER opmental Psychobiology 25:165-82. Brooklyn College and Graduate School, CUNY Nelson, Randy J. 2000. An Introduction to Be- havioral 2d ed. Sunderland, Endocrinology, CIENTISTS HAVE long tried to deter- MA: Sinaur Associates. S mine how biology might affect behav- Peiss, Kathy. 1996. "Making Up, Making Over: Cosmetics, Consumer Culture, and Women's ior. One particular hotspot of research has Identity." Pp. 311-36 in The Sex of Things: fixated on two of the many steroid molecules Gender and Consumption in Historical Per- more commonly referred to as hormones: spective, edited by V. de Grazia with E. Fur- testosterone and estrogen. These molecules lough. Berkeley, CA: University of California have assumed a place in both scientific and Press. general discourse as determining factors of June and Reinisch, M., Mary Ziemba-Davis, "gendered behavior." In his article, "Biologi- A. Sanders. 1991. "Hormonal Con- Stephanie cal Limits of Gender Construction," tributions to Behavioral Udry Sexually Dimorphic henceforward on his in Humans." (2000, Udry) reports Development Psychoneuroendo- of the adult behaviors that crinology 16:213-78. study gendered result from women's to Roberts, Celia. 2000. "Biological Behavior? Hor- prenatal exposure mones, Psychology, and Sex." National testosterone. In this comment, we critique Women's Studies Association Journal 12:1-20. Udry's guiding theoretical framework, his Schiebinger, Londa. 1992. "The Gendered Brain: definition and operationalization of "gen- Some Historical Perspectives." Pp. 110-20 in dered behavior," and the social and political So Human a Brain: Knowledge and Values in implications of his findings. the Neuroscience, edited by A. Harrington. Boston, MA: Birkauser. Sperling, Susan. 1997. "Baboons with Briefcases UDRY'S CONCEPT OF vs. Langurs with Lipstick," Pp. 249-64 in The "BIOSOCIAL" Gender/Sexuality Reader, edited by R. N. Lancaster and M. di Leonardo. New York: Udry's project is centered on 163 white 27- women from somewhat Routledge. to-30-year-old Templeton, Alan R. 1998. "HumanRaces: A Ge- higher-than-average socioeconomic class netic and Evolutionary Perspective." American backgrounds. When these women were fe- Anthropologist 100:632-50. tuses-during the second trimester of their Tiefer, Leonore. 1995. Sex Is Not a Natural Act mothers' pregnancies-researchers mea- and Other Essays. Boulder, CO: Westview. sured the amount of testosterone and sex Richard. 1994. "The Nature of Gender." Udry, hormone binding globulin (SHBG) present Demography. 31:561-73. in their mothers' blood. Since SHBG inhib- .2000. "Biological Limits of Gender Con- struction." American Review Sociological Direct correspondence to Ivy Kennelly, 65:443-57. George Washington University, Department of J. Naomi M. and Judith Udry, Richard, Morris, Sociology, Phillips 409, Washington DC 20052 Kovenock. 1995. Effects on "Androgen ([email protected]). We greatly appreciate in- Women's Gendered Behaviour." Journal of sights from Joya Misra, Cyrus F. Slaton, Wendy Biosocial Science 27:359-68. Simonds, Marina Karides, Carrie Yang Costello, Weininger, Otto. 1903. Sex and Character. New Eleanor M. Miller, Barbara J. Risman, three York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. anonymous reviewers, and the Editors of ASR. COMMENTS AND REPLIES 599 its testosterone from being transmitted from nizational-activational theories rely are a mother's to a daughter's bloodstream, a merely speculative, as they have never been high level of SHBG in a mother's blood sig- directly shown in any brain organization re- nifies to Udry that her daughter's brain will search (Fausto-Sterling 2000:195-232). be less "organized" by testosterone than it The debate about what causes behavior is would be if there were a low level of SHBG thus much more complex than "nature ver- in the mother's blood. Using OrdinaryLeast sus nurture.""Nature" for human beings in- Squares tests, Udry investigates whether the cludes reproductive systems and secondary level of testosterone in these pregnant moth- sex characteristics, the human genome, the ers' blood organized their female fetuses' evolution of human bodies, and the evolu- brains in ways that created "predispositions" tion of human psyches; for an individual it for certain types of gendered behaviors as is a particularset of genes and hormones that adults. result in a particular body and brain. "Nur- Udry's use of testosterone as an indepen- ture" includes life experiences, the social, dent variable is a manifestation of organiza- economic, and political milieu of similarly tional-activational theory, which became located people, culture, and the physical en- popular with psychologists and neuroendo- vironment in which the body and brain de- crinologists in the 1960s (Wijngaard 1997). velop. What we are as material bodies is the This theory, extrapolated from research on result of all the "natural"and "nurtured"in- animals to human beings, posits that expo- put working together and affecting each sure to prenatal hormones "hardwires" the other interactively. Gendered behavior and brain in ways that generate either distinctly its variations are the result of genetic and "masculine" behavior or distinctly "femi- hormonal input, long-term evolutionary ad- nine" behavior. Research in this vein has aptations, lifetime experiences, and involve- been guided by the assumption that biologi- ment in ongoing social situations. Interactive cal influences on behavior can be isolated theorists would argue that there is no simple from social influences, which has justified a or single answer to the question of how hu- preoccupation with determining which of the man beings differ biologically or how two is the "bedrock"source of gendered be- women and men differ behaviorally. There- havior. Such a quest has sometimes caused fore, there cannot be a simple or single way organizational-activational theorists to sup- of determining how much behavior can vary press evidence of social influences and made or how much our social orders can be it impossible to theoretically explain the changed by new patterns of behavior. considerable behavioral overlaps in men and Udry argues that he takes these interactive women. theories into account to create his "biosocial" In a critical response to this biological and model. Indeed, he does move beyond some sociological reductionism, more interactive of the weaknesses of a strictly unidirectional models have emerged since the 1980s that organizational-activational theory by intro- spring from the work done in a developing ducing socialization as an intervening vari- sociology of the body. This work does not able.1 However, his model of gender devel- assume that biological and social factors act opment is not biosocial so much as it is independently, but instead argues for a loop- biopsychological. In relying on participants' back interchange of bodily, behavioral, en- reports of parental socialization to account vironmental, interactive, and social struc- 1 tural factors (Birke 2000; Bordo 1993; To measuresocialization, Udry asks partici- Featherstone, Hepworth, and Turner 1991; pants if their mothers(and he later says, "par- Laqueur 1990; Martin [1987] 1992; Shilling ents")encouraged them to have, for instance,an 1993; Turner 1984; Wendell